by A. L. Knorr
I located my name on the map. I had been assigned to a trench called ‘Dorn.’ I smiled at the name. Someone was a Game of Thrones fan. I went to the box to retrieve some tools from the back of the van. Ibby opened the passenger door of the nearby Jeep and I looked up to see a rock fall from the bottom of her shorts and onto the sand.
"You dropped something, Ibby."
She backed out of the Jeep and looked down as I picked up the stone. "Hell's teeth," she cursed. "I forgot to fix my pocket." She put a hand inside her pocket and turned it inside out, poking her finger through the hole.
"I brought a sewing kit," I said, admiring the nearly transparent yellow-green stone in the sunlight.
"You're a brick. I'd forget my head if it wasn't attached."
"What is this?" I held up the rock.
"It's Libyan gold tektite. Desert glass," Ibby replied. "Isn't it beautiful?"
I agreed. Turning it over in my palm, I admired how the sun illuminated a multi-colored palette of yellows and soft greens. "Did you find it here?"
"Yes, over by those petroglyphs. I was surprised to find it, actually; most desert glass is found much closer to the Egyptian border." She watched me turn the stone with my fingertips. "It's supposed to be twenty-eight million years old. It was used to make tools in the Pleistocene era, and it's also found in the jewelry of the Pharaohs."
What she said triggered the memory of an image I had seen once of a scarab beetle pendant. The beetle's body had been fashioned from a bright yellow stone. I nodded as I recalled it. "They called it the Rock of God."
I looked up at Ibby, who stood over me by a good three inches.
She grinned. "Exactly. So you’ve seen it before?"
"Not in person. Do you really think it’s twenty-eight million years old?"
Ibby laughed and shrugged. "Who knows. They say a meteor of nuclear proportions landed in the desert, melting the sand into that." She jerked her chin at the tektite in my hand.
"Is it valuable?"
"Not really." She pointed to the stone with her pinky finger, the nail was buffed and painted with a clear polish. "This piece might go for sixty dollars or so but that's not why I picked it up."
"No?" I handed the stone back to her.
"No. I like rocks, gems, and metals. One could say I collect them, more to learn about their energetic qualities than their monetary value." She put her hand into the pocket that wasn't sitting turned inside out of her shorts. She pulled it out and opened her palm, showing a collection of three more baubles.
"Pretty." I peered at the glittery treasures in her palm. One stone was graphite gray but seemed filled with tiny crystals as it sparkled in the sun. The second was smooth and black as pitch. The third was also gray but had a blue and purple pearlescent quality completely unlike the first. "What are they?"
Ibby cocked her head inquisitively. "Is this really interesting to you? Don't get me wrong, I could talk about rocks all day, but my friends back in London have sworn they'd lock me in a box if I ever talk about my hobby in front of them again. This stuff is a snore to most."
"Everything is interesting when you take a closer look. Why do you think I like digging in the dirt?"
Ibby laughed. "Fair play."
"This one looks like obsidian." I pointed to the black shiny one.
"Yes, it’s volcanic glass, you're right." She rubbed the stone with her thumb, cleaning away the dust and making it gleam. "This sparkly one is basalt."
"That's what these mountains look like on the inside?" I picked up the stone, observing how dull it was on the outside, and yet how spectacularly it glimmered in the light where a chunk had been broken away.
"Amazing, isn't it?" She pointed to the bizarre lumpy structures partially surrounding the excavation site. "I just grabbed this little guy from the rubble and smacked it with a hammer."
"And this one?"
"Ah, this..." Ibby picked up the pearly one with affection painted all over her face. Her eyes seemed to light up and reflect the opalescent coloring. "This is wolfram, but you might better recognize it by the name of tungsten."
"Tungsten?" I wracked my brains. "The stuff that lightbulb filaments are made of?"
She gave me a bored Garfield expression, eyelids at half-mast. "That's all you know about it?"
I winced with an apologetic grin. "Why, what's so special about it?"
"This little digit," she held the pearly rock under my nose, "is exceedingly rare, has the highest melting point of all the metals, the second highest boiling point, and is used in x-ray tubes and radiation shielding."
"Wow, you’re a nerd, too" I said, laughing.
"You have no idea." She grinned.
"How do you know so much about rocks?"
Ibby closed the Jeep's door and followed me around to the back of the van, where we gathered tools, buckets, and face masks for excavating. "Some kids like dinosaurs, others like figure skating." She shrugged. "I liked rocks. I've been reading everything I could get my hands on since I was little."
"If you love them so much, why didn't you go into geology instead of archaeology?"
She looked thoughtful. "You know," she shut the van’s doors, "that is a question I ask myself every day." She threw an arm around my shoulders. "Ready to get dirty?"
"I was born ready.” And with that, my first North African excavation began in earnest.
Chapter 7
The sun bore down on the excavation site, cooking our tools and baking us through our clothing. We were a week into our dig and I had finally mastered the art of the turban. Though I had a dark complexion which tanned well, I still put sunscreen on any bits of skin that the sun would find.
Jesse and I were alone in a larger trench called Camelot, where the original skull had been found. There was hope for more intact human remains. Where there were bones was where I wanted to be. Evidently, Jesse too.
Ethan and Ibby would both stop on their way by with their buckets of dirt, reminding us to drink and just saying hello. Excavating was painstakingly slow and patient work. Jesse and I talked and passed the job together. We filled our buckets and dry-screened the contents at the dry-screen station by sifting the dirt through a tray fashioned with a fine-mesh bottom. Then we bagged and labeled any finds and fragments and left them on the tables under the tent before going back for more.
The sifting station had been erected a considerable distance from the excavation site to prevent the mound of discarded dirt from blowing back into the site. There was a ton of walking back and forth for everyone.
I asked Jesse about his life in Australia, but it became a battle of who should be the focus of conversation as with every bit of information he'd give, he'd ask 'what about you' in return and then continue asking more and more questions. I had rarely met anyone more inquisitive about others, or more reluctant to talk about himself. Finally, I gave up on my efforts to keep the focus on him.
"You said you were raised in the foster system?" Jesse asked for the third time. "What was that like?"
"Not as bad as the movies like to make it look," I said. "Not for me, anyway. I had an amazing foster mom. Beverly." My heart gave a painful squeeze as I thought of her. "She was the best mother I ever could have asked for."
"Was?" Jesse's brows drew together.
"Cancer," I said. It still took my breath away how much power that one word could have. It could strike fear into the heart in less than a second, as it had mine the first time Beverly had said it to me. And, in this case, it was a loaded one-word answer that didn't require any more explaining.
"I'm sorry."
"Thanks."
"You never met your birth mother?" Jesse's face froze for a moment and his eyes looked hesitant above his face mask. "Sorry, is it okay to be asking you about this? I realize I ask a lot of questions. Not everyone likes it."
"It's all right." I dumped another scoop of dirt into my bucket. "I'm not sensitive about my past."
This wasn't entirely true. I didn't share my st
ory with people because I didn't have any close friends. I had friendly acquaintances with schoolmates from high school and I was friendly with a few of my museum colleagues. Beyond that, I led a relatively solitary life. It wasn't that I liked being alone, because in fact I dreamed of having what Beverly had referred to in her old-fashioned way as a 'bosom buddy.' I sometimes found myself watching girls chattering away in a coffee shop, talking and laughing, their heads bent together. It looked lovely from the outside. But in my experience, these kinds of relationships always came to an end, usually painfully. Wasn't it better to avoid that pain altogether? Wasn't that pain worse than being lonely?
Noel and I had been over this territory many times during my years of therapy. Noel said I didn't let people in because I was fearful of being rejected or abandoned, and this was the same place my perfectionism and desire to be the best came from. This might be true on an unconscious level, but at the time it was difficult for a preteen to put a name to the reasons I pushed people away.
I had had people ask me in the past to talk about the circumstances of my birth. I usually just explained that my mother passed away when I was born and left it at that. The truth was a lot weirder. And somehow, for reasons I couldn't put my finger on, I wanted to talk about this with Jesse. The fact that I felt this way also made me a bit nervous.
"I only know what my therapist told me," I began, "which isn't really much to go on." I took a breath and adjusted my sunglasses. Sweat was gathering on my brow and under the nosepiece of my glasses. I took my glasses off and rubbed my face with my sleeve. I pulled my face mask away to let fresh air across my mouth.
"Here." Jesse handed me my water bottle. "I haven't seen you drink in a while." He reached for his own as well. He pulled his face mask down and took long swallows.
"Thanks." I took a drink, screwed the cap back on, and set it aside, then replaced my mask. "My mother was found lost and in labor on the streets of Saltford on New Year’s Eve. Some kind strangers found her because they could hear sounds of distress and pain coming from behind their house."
Jesse had stopped digging and was listening, his eyes glued to my face. "She was all alone?"
I nodded. "They took her to the hospital. When they gave their report to the police, they said she was adamant that she didn't want to go, but she couldn't resist them while she was in labor. From the sounds of it, they had to force her into the back of their van and make her lie down."
"That sounds intense. Did your mother say why she didn't want to go to the hospital?"
"I'm sure she tried to," I sat up straight and stretched my back. It was difficult to find a position that wasn’t uncomfortable after hours spent crouched or sitting in the dirt. "But she didn't speak any English and the couple who found her didn't know what language she was speaking. They found out later that it was Arabic."
"Wow! What was a pregnant lady who spoke no English doing wandering the freezing cold streets of a Canadian city? Was she homeless?"
"Apparently she was wearing expensive jewelry and clean clothing, so no. She was healthy and well-fed."
"Then what happened?"
"She died from eclampsia, but when I got older and couldn’t stop asking questions, they also explained that she was very fearful. Stress can be very damaging during labor. It didn’t help the situation."
"What was she afraid of?"
I shrugged. "They either don't know or they never told me."
Jesse frowned. "That must burn you up."
"What?"
"The fact that they might be withholding information from you."
"Oh." He was right, and that took me by surprise. I searched his eyes, which were full of second-hand anger. Warmth spread through my heart. He was furious on my behalf. "Yes, I have been upset about that. Nothing I can do about it though, aside from hack into their computer system to see anything in my files they've been withholding." I chuckled.
Jesse's face brightened as though this was a brilliant idea.
"I'm only joking." I laughed at the comical look on his face.
"Oh." His face actually fell with disappointment. "And what about your dad?"
"He's an even bigger mystery," I said. "I don't know a thing about him, not even his name. The janitor who understood a little bit of Arabic told the ER staff that my mother insisted there was no father."
"No father?" Jesse cocked an eyebrow. "Like an immaculate conception or something?"
I laughed again. "I think what she meant was that my father was not involved with her anymore."
"Oh." Jesse wiped across his brow with his hand, leaving a streak of dirt. A frown line appeared between his brows. "What kind of guy would knock up a girl and then leave her to fend for herself in a foreign country?"
"I try not to look at it that way." I reached up and brushing the dirt off Jesse's forehead.
"Thanks." He sat still while I cleaned him off, closing his eyes and leaning into my care. He cracked an eye open and pinned me with his dark green gaze. "How do you look at it then?"
"Who knows what happened? He could have died, or been detained somehow. I try not to assume the worst."
He cracked the other eye open and pulled back. "That's very generous of you."
"What good does it do me to demonize either of them?"
"Fair," he said. "Do you know you mother's name?"
I nodded and took another drink. "Her name was Tala Kara, she was a immigrant from Jordan. Apparently she wrote my name on a piece of paper only a few hours before she passed away."
"After the city?"
"I'm guessing so. She was Jordanian after all."
"Have you been there?"
"No, I have been so focused on saving money for university that I’ve barely been anywhere at all. One day, I will go to Petra. Of course." I glanced up at him. "Have you been there?"
"No," he said. "I’ve always wanted to. Maybe one day we can go together."
I blinked at him in surprise and my stomach gave a squeeze of anxiety. "Maybe," I said, quietly. I immediately stomped on the hope that sprang up like a burbling fountain. When people said things like this, more often than not they didn't mean it.
"Bollocks, blast and bloody hell!" came a frustrated cry on the wind. Jesse and I raised our heads above the hole.
"Sounded like Ethan," I said. "I think he's in the van."
We left our tools, climbed out of Camelot and made our way to the van which had its side door propped open. Sure enough, Ethan was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the van surrounded by equipment and holding a laptop in his lap. A tangle of cords surrounded him and a strange plastic gun-like tool sat at his hip. The panel on the gun’s face was blinking with an error message.
Ethan’s brow gleamed with sweat and large circles of damp stained his shirt at the armpits. A deep slash between his eyes and patchy red spots on his cheeks weren't the only tell-tale signs of his frustration. A manual had been ripped in half down the spine and the pages scattered across the floor of the van.
"Dude, your eyes are popping out on springs." Jesse leaned a shoulder against the van door. "Can I help?"
Ethan's eyes had a glassy, wild appearance. "I've been trying to pull the data from the handheld for the last half hour. Do you know anything about XRF technology? Oh, I don't even care." He handed the laptop to Jesse. "Please take this before I throw it."
"I don't, but..." Jesse perched on the running board of the van and steadied the laptop on his knee. "Let's take a look."
Ethan let out a long, hopeless sigh. He grabbed a kerchief and mopped his face. "Hand me that water there, would you please, Petra?"
I handed Ethan the bottle tucked into the netting of the seat back. "What's an XRF gun for?"
"It's a new-ish technology. At least to archaeology," Ethan explained, the red in his face slowly returning to a less alarming shade. "It saves us having to collect soil samples and send them to a lab." He tapped his finger on the tool at his hip. "It's like a Tricorder from Star Trek. It has the capabil
ity of quantifying and qualifying pretty much any material on earth."
Jesse's eyes flashed up. "I doubt she's a Trekkie, Ethan," he said. A dimple in his cheek appeared before he ducked his had back to the computer. He frowned and checked the cords linking the gun to the laptop. He picked up the gun and began to interact with the control panel.
"You never know." Ethan looked at me hopefully.
"Not a Trekkie. Sorry to disappoint," I replied. "What are you analyzing?" I put my own water bottle to my lips and took a big swig.
"Poop."
I turned my head just in time to spew the water all over the side of the van.
Ethan and Jesse both burst out laughing.
I mopped my wet face with my sleeve, laughing too. "Excuse me?"
"I'm serious," replied Ethan. "Chris came across a circular deposit in his trench with a speckled layer in the sand.”
“Possible sign of an ancient bathroom,” added Jesse, glancing up from the gun.
Ethan nodded. “They would dig a deep hole to do their business in but over time, the pit fills up with garbage and soil. Chris just found the circular pattern today and suspected it might be a latrine. The gun saves us oodles of time spent analysing soil samples." He frowned at the gun in Jesse’s hand. “When it’s working properly.”
I gave Jesse a look. "So much for my pro con list."
"Your pro con list?"
"I made a list about the pros and cons of working in archaeology. One of the big pros was," I made air quotes, "has little to no contact with poop.'
Jesse chuckled. "Yeah, better switch that to a con." He handed the laptop back to Chris. "Here you go. Problem solved."
Ethan's face widened with surprise and relief. "Really?" He took the laptop and surveyed the screen.